Sermon : God save our gracious church!

Banksy, 2012, Upper Maudlin Street Bristol

God save our gracious church! A meditation on 2 Corinthians 3.4-18 through the words of the first verse of the national anthem, written for Evensong on the Feast of Pentecost and the end of The Platinum Jubilee celebrations at St Stephen with St John, Westminster on Sunday 5th June 2022.

 

This evening of the Feast of Pentecost, let us sing: God save our gracious Church!

 

Save us from our reluctance to change by enlivening our hearts with the fire of your love.

 

Save us from the temptation to veil our faces; flattering ourselves with a filtered, airbrushed perspective on the world.

 

Save us from the fear of the freedom that comes from opening our minds to our true image; the power of the glory of the Lord as reflected in a mirror.  

 

Save us from self conceit - claiming the credit for the work of the Spirit  - justifying our actions and not our faith.

 

Save us from our naval-gazing - while the make-shift ships of our brothers and sisters capsize around us.   

 

Save us from our incompetence to be truly hospitable to all. May your spirit of compassion and humility drive us to be winds of change; blowing down the barriers that separate us from one another. Help us to be real neighbours.

 

Save us from speaking in spite; may our tongues sing only words of friendship. 

 

Save us by the transforming power of your grace.

 

God save our gracious church. 

Long live our noble church!

 

Long live our nobility - our noblesse - our privilege - of being baptised by the spirit into this one great family of faith. May we be ever thankful that we are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation. 

 

Let us never deny our noble inheritance - our treasure from heaven; a house with an apartment for each of us; sumptuous banquets where no one goes without; surrounded by eternal, liberating love.  

 

Long live our ability to rediscover the transforming power of sharing this divine privilege in communion with those around us, all who have gone before us and all who are yet to come. 

 

Long live our desire to recognise and challenge earthly privilege; to lift the veil from our eyes so that we might see our own; to be moved not just in thought and prayer - but to action - by the image of Christ in the faces of all those around us - not just those of our clan. 

 

Long live those noble virtues of integrity, honesty and courage; that we might act with great boldness - holding our heads up high and proclaiming the Good News of Jesus Christ. 

 

Long live our noble church!

Send her victorious.

 

Send her out of this place, driven by the Spirit, into every street, every home, every place of work in this parish and beyond - to be a living witness to Christ’s victory over darkness and despair. 

 

Send her out, imperfect, displaying the scars of fleeting victories over the temptations of the world; a repentant sinner, always forgiven. 

 

Send her out to nurture peace and reconciliation wherever there is discord and distrust; proclaiming Christ’s victory on the cross; finding security not in stockpiles of weapons but in his outstretched arms.

 

Send us, her people, out of our comfort zones, to be ministers of the new covenant of life and hope; victorious over our own doubts and insecurities through the knowledge that the strife is over, the battle won. 

 

Send her victorious.

 

Happy and glorious.

 

Happy that we have been called through our baptism and by the example of Christ ever closer into the glorious relationship that is Father, Son and Holy Spirit. 

 

Happy that we have each received gifts through which we can work to glorify God our Father; becoming his image bearers in the world. 

 

Happy that the glory of God is man fully alive; so let us seek to live life in all its glittering fullness. 

 

Happy that God’s brilliant celebrity resonates throughout every crumb, every particle, every atom of creation. Let us bear the weight of this glory by reverencing our natural world.

 

Happy that, despite all our failings, our false starts, our loose ends and unfinished business, we are being continually transformed by the Spirit, from one degree of glory to another. 

 

Happy and glorious.

Long to reign over us. 

 

A reign supreme; which is alpha and omega, the beginning and the end; established before the creation of the world.

 

A reign in which the fake news of our earthly allegiances will be held up to the reality of the Good News that is the living God. 

 

A reign of immeasurable blessings and boundless love, in which we will each find fulfilment.  

 

A reign which was made visible by the incarnation, crucifixion, resurrection and ascension of Christ himself; who has promised to come again.  

 

A reign we can glimpse through the gift of the holy scriptures and the sacraments and through our loving service to one another. 

 

A reign which is our deepest - our only true - longing; thy kingdom come.

 

Long to reign over us. 

 

As we come to the end of this Feast of Pentecost we pray, renewed in the Spirit;
God save the Church.

 

Amen